Gu Yuhan, an undergraduate of 2017 majoring in Vehicle Engineering in theSchool of Mechanical Engineering (SWJTU), published a paper entitled “A Goblet-like Non-linear Electromagnetic Generator for Planar Multi-directional Vibration Energy Harvesting” as the first author in the top international journal Applied Energy.

Applied Energy is the top flagship journal in the field of energy engineering of Elsevier (a Dutch publishing and analytics company), with an impact factor of 8.426 in 2019, ranking among the TOP 3% in JCR Q1 (Journal Citation Reports Quartile 1) of Chinese Academy of Sciences. This is the first time for a junior student in the School of Mechanical Engineering to publish a paper as the first author in the SCI journal of JCR Q1.

This paper focuses on the vibration energy harvesting technology that collects vibration energy in the environment and converts it into electric energy available for storage and use, in response to traditional chemical batteries’ defects of regular replacement and environmental pollution. Such technology is becoming a popular research object for more and more research teams.

Gu Yuhan’s team creatively proposed a method to transform the potential energy curve in a two-dimensional plane into a mechanical oscillator that can be applied in energy harvesting in a three-dimensional space, and solved three major problems in the field of energy harvesting.

“The idea is interesting with extraordinary innovations”, commented the reviewers, “The reported concept is interesting and innovative, and potentially open perspective fields of shaping potential function to any form”.

Gu joined the team led by Associate Professor Liu Weiqun in early 2019, dedicating to the research of new energy harvesting devices. Under the guidance of Professor Liu, she applied for the project of the Student Research Training Program (SRTP), and completed the design, fabrication, experiment, analysis and paper writing for the novel mechanical oscillator.